Remembering Ed White

At my invitation, our friend Robert Muir has shared his thoughts on the recent passing of his longtime friend, Edmund White.

"The New York Times did a comprehensive article on Edmund White after his passing, but I wanted to add some of my personal reflections.

Like many gay men of my generation, I was influenced by the novels of Edmund White and Andrew Holleran in the early 1980s. White’s trilogy of autobiographical novels: A Boy’s Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Farewell Symphony, had a huge impact on my reading and my education on gay life. I attended many of Edmund White’s readings and book signings through the 90s and beyond. His Genet: A Biography led me into the world of Genet’s writing and life. I remember seeing a very striking Frenchman who sat with Ed at one of his readings and always wondered if that was Huber Sorin, his lover and the basis for the character of Julian in A Married Man.

Around the time when his play "Terre Haute" was set to premiere in London, I decided to reach out to Ed in a letter via Princeton where he was teaching. I was headed to London for the play, but missed him there by two days. He emailed me back and we began a 17-year correspondence over emails. In August 2008, he invited me to his apartment in New York, and we had lunch and a long chat in a Chelsea restaurant.

Since then, we’ve exchanged thousands of emails about life and literature, mostly gay literature. I’ve kept him abreast of the books we read at BookMen and he’s advised me of his thoughts on our books, as well as others. He turned me on to the works of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño and Spanish writer Javier Marias, whose novels--The Savage Detectives (2007) and The Infatuations (2013), respectively--I found to be exceptional contemporary literature. We also talked at length about Anna Karenina, which he always claimed was his favorite novel and which he reread about every three years. He also gave me a heads up on Edouard Louis as The End of Eddy was making waves.

While our book club was reading Caracole, Tim Walton and I put together a list of real-life people we believed were the basis for the characters in the novel. I sent it to Ed, and he was impressed that we got six out of the eight characters right. He told us the real names for the other two.

Ed was always so generous with his time on all things literary; quick to correct me when I was getting off track, but never in a condescending way. I feel so blessed to have known him on some level, and I will sorely miss that connection to him."

Thanks for sharing this lovely tribute, Robert!